The thing is, that if they wouldn't care about what "we" want, they wouldn't be getting any money. Gamers are changing, and sadly, what we are seeing is a direct result of what the new generation of gamers wants to see. The modern gamer doesn't want to try too hard, think too much or wait too long. Modern games are a cake walk for a reason. Heck, I barely ever see any game over screens these days. Its not about weather you can beat the game or not, its about weather you stick around long enough to see the ending. As an experiment, I dare you to fire up your old consoles (if you still have one) and see how long you last in an oldschool game. I did, and I probably saw more Game Over screen in ten minutes than I had in a month of "modern gaming". The thing that kept running through my head was "how the heck did I beat this as a kid?". The reason is simple, modern games made me lazy, I expect a game to hold my hand now, tell me what buttons to press and when to press them. But what if I fail? No problem, I just take three steps back and go again. When I was a kid, games would be strict and unforgiving. There was no room to mess up because it meant starting over. Now that I'm an adult, games treat me like a child. I find that fairly ironic.

« Last Edit: August 05, 2011, 08:04:07 AM by Maxximum »

Logged

NOW PLAYING:Final Fantasy XIII: The time has come...Edna & Harvey: The Breakout: Its...Odd...One Finger Death Punch: F*ck Yeah! - The game

But they don't care about what we want. What actual gamers want, what the people who brought them to where they are today want, because we aren't as numerous as the call of duty playing brodudes, or the people who lap up shovelware like it's something that's actually good. Gamers aren't changing companies just found patsies to sell their shit to so they don't have to try to make good games. Why waste time and energy making and marketing good games when you can make shit that sells well.

So much tedious cynicism and 'back in my day' whining in this thread. There were just as many bad games in the past as there are now, just that the genres that sell well have changed. E.g. substitute generic military FPS now for generic platformer in the 90s.

So much tedious cynicism and 'back in my day' whining in this thread. There were just as many bad games in the past as there are now, just that the genres that sell well have changed. E.g. substitute generic military FPS now for generic platformer in the 90s.

Except there's the added element of many of these companies, namely the Japanese ones, becoming very different from what they were even 5 years ago. Konami's relatively benign, they actually seem to have some of the better luck with western developed entries given that it's gotten us Contra 4 and Shattered Memories, but you have companies like Square Enix that are borderline irrelevant now. It's pretty fucked that they pretty much have NOTHING on the horizon from Japan but FFXIII-2, at least the Eidos output's improved some. Then there's Capcom throwing aside AAI2 and canceling MML3, and Irem practically shutting down entirely.

There's always a bright side, companies like Atlus are still developing great games and most of the stuff they used to localize wasn't all that great anyway, plus some of these downloadable games a pretty great, it's just that many of the old guard are faltering.

what the fuck is going on in japan that so many jrpg franchises have died? this is starting to seem like more of a japan problem than an america problem

Why would it be an America problem? Maybe Japanese developers are tired of old hat genres?

It's a worldwide problem. Because ironically as tech advances the world economy seems to keep getting worse. Making any sort of more niche title is now one huge risk because development costs keeping getting higher, and if the publishers don't think they can make enough money off a game they simply wont publish it. Like everything else in this world our hobby is run by the almighty dollar. Game publishers (most of them) don't care about the fans anymore, the developers might but the publishers don't just look at Capcom, EA, Nintendo, Activision, THQ and I'm sure others. They don't care about what we want they just want our money.

Tech advances have little to actually do with how the world economy is doing. Its far more due to everybody and their brother investing in the US's economy while the US spends a decade wastefully spending like there's no tomorrow (and that's not including all the holes in the bucket that were there to begin with) until there's nothing left for anybody.

What's going on in Japan right now has a lot to do with the primary gaming and anime demographics aging up and tightening their belts. As well as the low birthrate and larger number of elderly individuals lingering about further diminishing the gaming and anime's viable market. Not to mention the fact that many Japanese companies are simply refusing to even acknowledge the issues (more of an anime issue than videogames per say but there is overlap).

Videogames actually have other issues that further complicate matters. Such as game sales don't operate in the way that a lot of people think they operate in (the publishing company make a profit off their product when its sold to stores like GameStop, Wal Mart, Toys R Us, Best Buy, the European equivalents, ect...), and many of these stores are diminishing shelf space to make room for other things. The remaining shelf space is usually reserved for known movers and shakers (such as Madden, CoD, ect...) while more obscure titles can only be found in places like GameStop. However, once a game hits the shelf, that's all the money the developers will see of that game unless the store places an order for additional batches, but places like GameStop makes the lion's share of their profits through the resale of used games which lets them get around the need to order more from publishers (and generally pays back cents to the dollar for the seller). And then there's piracy, emulation, and importing, each of which lets consumers get around having to purchase from most retail stores (or anything at all in many cases), and hardcore video game consumers are a notoriously self-serving bunch with some territories such as China being nearly complete black holes for the videogame market (or any market for that matter). And then there's the newly emerging cellphone market, which is both boons and balls for developers since they sidestep the whole physical retail process but aren't exactly up to the task of being dedicated gaming machines yet. Digital distribution is also a place that many lesser developers could end up fleeing to but most of them either don't have the know how or continue to pretend that it doesn't exist. And then there's office politics further muddying things up, and so on....

I dare you to fire up your old consoles (if you still have one) and see how long you last in an oldschool game.

I'm actually playing mega man zero 3 right now. Not too old, but somewhat oldschool. And I put in a cheat code. At points certain bosses or platforming parts can be challenging. And I like that. I didn't cheat to give myself invincibility or to give zero all his upgrades early. No, I used infinite lives. Because when you continue you go back and have to do the whole level over. And that's some bullshit. Not as bad as when you'd have to restart the whole game on a random nes game, but still bullshit.

Or devil may cry. Capcoms getting some hate right now, but I felt a bit bad for them back then. 'Man, devil may cry 2 sucks, this shit is too easy', followed up by 'Man, devil may cry 3 sucks, this shit is too hard'. I rented 3 and i gave up on it too. The problem wasn't that it was hard though. It was that it was punishing. Same problem as MMZ. It's not fun to keep redoing the whole level over and over. Except this time I had no codes to get around it.

How this fits into rpgs? I don't know :P I suppose it's the difference between nocturne telling you 'Yo dawg, boss behind this door, go back and take a left and save your game first' and just having the boss come out of nowhere. Regardless, for games in general(With some genre based exceptions like strategy) go ahead and knock me on my ass. But knock me onto a soft pillow so I can get right back up again.

There have been attempts to make Indie Suikoden titles. In that regard, the game will never die. I actually feel that a properly organised team of fans, could actually do a better job than a team of professionals that don't really "feel" the game.

Exit Fate is a shining example of one of them. It's one of the best indie games out there.

Anyway, this is terrible news indeed! If Suikoden does get a new team, I hope they're competent enough to capture the "essence" of the previous games.

The thing is, that if they wouldn't care about what "we" want, they wouldn't be getting any money. Gamers are changing, and sadly, what we are seeing is a direct result of what the new generation of gamers wants to see. The modern gamer doesn't want to try too hard, think too much or wait too long. Modern games are a cake walk for a reason. Heck, I barely ever see any game over screens these days. Its not about weather you can beat the game or not, its about weather you stick around long enough to see the ending. As an experiment, I dare you to fire up your old consoles (if you still have one) and see how long you last in an oldschool game. I did, and I probably saw more Game Over screen in ten minutes than I had in a month of "modern gaming". The thing that kept running through my head was "how the heck did I beat this as a kid?". The reason is simple, modern games made me lazy, I expect a game to hold my hand now, tell me what buttons to press and when to press them. But what if I fail? No problem, I just take three steps back and go again. When I was a kid, games would be strict and unforgiving. There was no room to mess up because it meant starting over. Now that I'm an adult, games treat me like a child. I find that fairly ironic.